Meistersinger @HollandFestival convinces musically only

Holland Festival

Cowardly knight defeats untalented rule fetishist with help from wise cobbler and wins singing contest and the hand of coquettish goldsmith's daughter. Or: boy meets girl on the streets of Nuremberg and decides to enter the local version of Nuremberg's got talent. The judges send him away, but he gets the audience vote. Wagner wouldn't be Wagner, however, if he didn't take about five hours for this story.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg occupies a special place in Wagner's mature oeuvre. Whether he succeeded in his intention to write a 'light-hearted comedy' is very much in doubt, but it is his only opera without mythical figures and heroes who bring redemption or just have to be redeemed. There are no deaths, women do not have to sacrifice themselves and, even crazier, it ends well and at the end the whole nation sings a hymn to German art and its masters.

And indeed, partly because of this, Die Meistersinger was also loved by the Nazis and was played at party meetings in, indeed, Nuremberg. After the wedding music from Lohengrin, the overture is the most frequently played Wagner piece, unfortunately all too often far too bombastic.

That bombast is thankfully far away in the Netherlands Opera's new production. Director David Allen especially emphasises the bourgeois nature of the master singers. They engage in art in a cellar, but lose themselves in lines, the untalented Beckmesser in front, here portrayed as a posturing dandy. Their companions look like boy scouts, and the action is moved from the 16th to what most closely resembles the late 19th century. The comic magnification shown by Alden in the third act, however, backfires: it never gets funny.

Much better is the impressive and gruesomely difficult fugue that concludes the second act. In less than five minutes, Wagner practically works through the text of the entire baroque opera, singing everything and everyone interchangeably, but good movement direction keeps it clear what is happening.

Thanks to conductor Marc Albrecht, this is nevertheless a memorable Wagner production. From the very first bars of the overture, it is clear that he wants the orchestra to play especially lightly, and in the fugue he effortlessly keeps the immense choir and soloists together. Here, soprano Agneta Eichenholz (an Eva to fall in love with) and Adrian Eröd (Beckmesser) stand out in particular.